WASHINGTON – Chief Justice John Roberts, presiding over the impeachment trial of President Trump, is supposed to be an unbiased umpire. Upon his elevation to his high post, he famously declared that his job was like that of a baseball umpire, to call balls and strikes, not to declare winners and losers.

As the Senate trial opened, however, he admonished the rival House and Senate presenters to “remember that they are addressing the world’s most deliberative body,” and that they “should remember where they are.'”

This sharp if benignly delivered reminder captured the tone of the first day. It signaled Roberts’s intent to keep the trial within bounds of proper decorum, as the House side sought to present its case against Trump and the Senate to cast the event as a purely partisan exercise.

The trial kicked off with the expected argument between the House and Senate managers over the calling or rejecting new witnesses and documents. The House Democrats offered their allegations against Trump and the Senate Republicans followed with their boiler-plate defenses.

None of it did anything to shake the broad expectation that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s firm grip on his majority will in the end deliver a verdict of acquittal.

The Republican senators shelved by 54-47 votes Democratic bids to subpoena Trump administration figures and associated paper work, with a similar repeat vote expected later in the impeachment process.

The Democrats thus still need four Republicans to be persuaded to flip, based on stronger evidence of the president’s malfeasance, sought from such potential witnesses as former National Security Adviser John Bolton. He has said that, if subpoenaed, he will appear.

The first major assault on Trump came from House lead manager Rep. Adam Schiff of California, in a two-hour-plus summary of the impeachment charges. It stayed well within the chief justice’s caution that House and Senate rival presenters honor the civility desired within the hallowed halls of Congress, if seldom in reality delivered.

In the first round of the Republican senators’ presentation, however, they largely ignored Roberts’s advice by continuing their blanket defense of the president’s assurance that he had “done nothing wrong,” and that besides, whatever he did do was “not impeachable.”

As for Roberts’s pitch for decorum, Senate Republicans defending Trump and the absent president himself largely brushed it aside. They were determined to dismiss the whole business, in Trump’s own tweeted words, as a “hoax” and a “disgrace” perpetrated by lead House managers Schiff and Nadler, whom he labeled “major sleazebags.”

In the first round of the Republican senators’ presentation, however, they largely ignored Roberts’s advice by merely continuing their blanket defense of the president’s assurance that he had “done nothing wrong,” and that besides, whatever he did do was “not impeachable.”

The Democrats thus require that four more Republicans said to be wavering on the issue be persuaded to flip, under pressure of stronger evidence of the president’s malfeasance, provided by such potential witnesses as John Bolton.

The the Senate trial got rolling with a routine exchange of Democratic allegations against Donald Trump and boiler-plate Republican defenses that did nothing to shake the broad expectation that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s firm grip on his majority will in the end deliver the verdict of acquittal.

In this third presidential impeachment, the Democrats now are relying on a strong evidentiary case that Trump sought to bribe a Ukraine president for political gain, in return for $391 million in military aid and a White House visit for him, to confirm American support.

The Republicans meanwhile seem willing to rely on Trump’s word that his behavior was “perfect” will somehow carry the day. In the court of public opinion, however, the jury is still out after interminable hours of television coverage and chatter that may well prove beyond many voters’ toleration and patience.

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